iBeacons – the white elephant in the room

Brands are fighting like mad for your attention – and iBeacons promise to deliver it. Mobile coupons for your favourite beer as you enter the drinks aisle at Morrisons? Discounts off Chelsea merchandise as you enter Stamford Bridge ….

Hands up if you’ve ever had such an experience? Keep that hand up if it wasn’t part of a tech demo? And if you weren’t creeped out, or left searching for the Opt Out, send me an email!

The reason for the lack of case studies with iBeacons is not a lack of supply. Dominique Fyson reported this week that Exterion, Ubiquitous, Mobile Media and Airport Media have all rolled out the tech – yet Posterscope have yet to use it in a single campaign this year. The problem is this : iBeacons is a clever tech that appeals intuitively to advertisers … but takes the consumer’s engagement for granted.

To participate, you may have to enable Bluetooth, download a branded app, enable notifications and/or allow location access. Those hurdles may reduce – for example with Google’s physical web – but no-one should expect consumers to take steps to enable advertisements, when most of them are taking active steps to block them!

Rather than interrupting people while they are doing something else, better to reach them they are “captive”, even bored … at the cinema, listening to the radio … or at the urinal! Better still, take an experience they already love – like a game – and make it better, but branded!